System and method for real time tracking of student performance based on state educational standards

ABSTRACT

A system for providing feedback on educational standards within schools includes an interface providing access to a plurality of established educational standards which may be downloaded into a database of the system. A plurality of control modules enables a user to establish educational programs specifically associated with at least one of the downloaded established educational standards and receive feedback on student performance. Real time reports on student performance are provided responsive to the received feedback on student performance.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application60/640,505 entitled “Real-Time Assessment of Student Performance Basedon State Education Standards” filed on Dec. 30, 2004, which isincorporated herein by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the assessment of educationalperformance within a school district, and more particularly, to realtime assessment of performance with respect to established educationalstandards.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

A standard assessment and accountability system (SAAS) allows thoseinvolved in the educational process to measure their performance againsta particular standard and take corrective action where necessary.Examples of these types of systems include the No Child Left Behind Actwhich builds on the framework of standards based educational reform andsets more specific testing and accountability requirements for thestates. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was passed to promoteimprovements to the American educational system. The purpose of the lawwas to ensure that all children have a fair, equal and significantopportunity to obtain a high quality education and reach, at a minimum,proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards andstate academic assessments. Among its provisions, the No Child LeftBehind Act promotes increased empowerment and involvement by law makers,administrators, teachers, students and parents. The Act also providedfor accountability for student performance and annual academicassessment of student performance.

The overall strategy of the Act is to identify successes and failures inthe educational system via a yearly assessment test. The testing resultsare provided to everyone from parents and students to districtadministrators and state officials. Individual choices can be made toimprove each student's education at different levels in the followingmanners. Parents have the option to move their children out of a failingschool and into a more successful school, receive tutoring, or attendafter school programs at the cost of their school district. Schools canprovide professional development funding to teachers in need ofimprovement. District administrators can ensure that every studentdemographic is provided an equal, high quality education. The stateagencies can reallocate funds to target areas such as dropout preventionprograms and intervention programs for delinquent, neglected and at riskyouth. Additional funding awards can be provided to schools showingmarked improvement.

Examples of these assessment programs within the states include, forexample, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). TAKS is atesting program that replaced the Texas Assessment of Academic SkillsTest. Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are the center of thecurriculum and define the basic content of the instructional andassessment programs in the State of Texas. TEKS outlines the knowledgeand skills required of every student on the Texas Assessment ofKnowledge and Skills test. The successful implementation of the TEKS isdependent upon school staff having a thorough understanding of the TEKSand the relationship to the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skillstest. Student achievement on the TAKS is best assured by high qualityclassroom instruction with a TEKS focus. Of course, while the presentexample is with respect to a Texas educational standard, any statestandard may be used.

Currently, student performance is measured at the end of the school termvia the TAKS testing program. There is no method for students, parents,teachers or school administrators to know which TEKS have been coveredin class or to what extent, how well students understand the coursematerials, whether daily assignments are applicable and are focused onspecific TEKS areas, whether any problem areas or subjects need to berevisited, whether there is an instructor issues, classroom problem,textbook problem or student learning disability, and whether there is anissue with behavior control or attendance. The onus to educate studentsand correct any problems in the learning process remains with theinstructor, parents and school administrators. However, these problemareas cannot be corrected if they are not known. Each step of theeducational process cannot be improved if it cannot be measured.

One problem with assessment testing such as the TAKS program is that theassessment tests are only performed once a year. Standards basedassessment testings are normally administered a maximum of once a yearbecause they can be physically and emotional stressful to the students.Students are also required to spend a significant amount of timepreparing for both the test subjects and in test taking practices. Thetests are normally administered over a three to five day period anddepending upon a school's policy, students may not be allowed toprogress to a next grade level based on their test performance. Thus, anentire year of school work could be nullified by a single bad day.

The assessment tests may also be time consuming and disruptive. Normalschool activities will be disrupted due to the several days required forcompletion of the test. School is additionally disrupted by the timebefore a scheduled assessment test required to prepare the students ontest taking strategies and practice tests rather than on test subjectmaterial. The tests are also financially costly due to the salariesneeded to be paid to teaching staff and test proctors, the payment forthe testing materials, payment for the scoring process and for thereporting process. Another problem with annual assessment tests are thatthey may be skewed by indifference, cheating or poor proctoring.Cheating students and poor proctoring practices during theadministration of the test can cause inaccurate results to be achieved.Also, many students do not take the assessment test seriously since theyhave no bearing on their normal school grades.

Thus, the standards assessment and accountability concept for improvingeducation is not as successful as it might be for a number of reasons.The long test cycle enables tests to only be administered once per year.This assessment process normally occurs during the end of the year whenit is too late to improve student performance. Thus, underperformingstudents are not identified until the end of the school year. Whileusing the testing results, adjustments may be made to the curriculum andteaching methods, these changes may only be administered in thefollowing year's students. While parents are provided with theassessment results at the end of the school year, it is too late forparents to intervene to help improve their child's performance. Sincethe single assessment test is the only source of data to ascertain thebreadth and depth of a student's knowledge, when students areindifferent, cheat or simply have a bad day, the test scores may beskewed and not reflect the true measure of the student's performance.

Assessment tests are also one dimensional. They only provide ameasurement of the student's knowledge at the end of the school year.Many other determining factors are not taken into consideration, such asdaily assignment grades, student attendance and behavior, documentedcoverage of all applicable state standards, concepts taught in theclassroom, adequate amount of class assignments relating to statestandards concepts, performance per teacher per classroom and thecombination of environmental, demographic and all of the above data.

The standards assessment and accountability concept also does notaddress day-to-day school activities and does not measure the individualperformance of teachers and school administrators. Thus, it is difficultto implement any type of accountability procedures based upon testresults. Finally, since parents only receive test results at the end ofthe school year, they do not have the ability to help their childrentarget their most difficult subjects.

Thus, there is a need to provide a more up-to-date real time assessmentof how individual students are performing with respect to establishededucational standards.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention disclosed and claimed herein, in one aspectthereof, comprises a system for providing feedback on educationalstandards within schools. The system includes an interface for providingaccess to a plurality of established educational standards. At least onedatabase within the system stores the established educational standardswhich have been downloaded through the interface. A plurality of controlmodules enable a user to establish educational programs specificallyassociated with at least one of the downloaded educational standards.The control modules further receive feedback on student performance andprovide real time reports on student performance responsive to thereceived feedback.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

For a more complete understanding of the present invention and theadvantages thereof reference is now made to the following descriptiontaken in conjunction with the accompanying Drawings in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates the standards assessment and accountability systemfeedback cycle;

FIG. 2 illustrates an overview of the associated data used by thetracking system;

FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram of the tracking system;

FIG. 3 a illustrates the Roles and Domains structure of the schooldistrict database;

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating the operation of the trackingsystem;

FIG. 5 illustrates the linkage between the state educational standardsand other data tables;

FIG. 6 illustrates the Phase I user interface for downloadingeducational standards;

FIG. 7 illustrates the Phase II interface for downloading educationalstandards;

FIG. 8 illustrates the graphical user interface for displaying accessedstate educational standards;

FIG. 9 illustrates the linkage of lesson plan tables to various otherdata tables within the tracking system;

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram illustrating the process for downloading stateeducational standards into the tracking system;

FIG. 11 is a graphical user interface indicating a lesson plan summary;

FIG. 12 is a graphical user interface of the lesson plan edit view;

FIG. 13 is a flow diagram illustrating the process for viewing anexisting lesson plan;

FIG. 14 is a flow diagram illustrating the process for creating orediting a lesson plan;

FIG. 15 is a flow diagram illustrating the process for linking a statestandard to a particular lesson plan;

FIG. 16 illustrates the linkage of the assignments data table to variousother data tables in the tracking system;

FIG. 17 is a graphical user interface of the teacher class list;

FIG. 18 is a graphical user interface of the assignment list;

FIG. 19 is a graphical user interface of the assignment edit window;

FIG. 20 is a flow diagram illustrating the manner for viewingassignments;

FIG. 21 is a flow diagram illustrating the manner for creating andediting assignments;

FIG. 22 is a flow diagram illustrating the process for associating alesson plan with a particular assignment;

FIG. 23 illustrates the linkage between the assignments data table andvarious other data tables within the tracking system;

FIG. 24 illustrates a top level diagram of the manner in which thetracking system may be used by decision makers;

FIG. 25 is a graphical user interface of the grade entry by assignmentscreen;

FIG. 26 is a flow diagram illustrating the process for entering gradesthrough the assignment screen;

FIG. 27 is a graphical user entry of the grade entry by class screen;

FIG. 28 is a flow diagram describing the process for grade entry usingthe class grade book screen;

FIG. 29 illustrates a sample demographics report;

FIG. 30 is a flow diagram illustrating the manner for creating aparticular report;

FIG. 31 is a flow diagram describing the overall process flow of thesystem platform; and

FIG. 32 illustrates the manner in which the system provides real timedata analysis responsive to the linkage of various input data.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to FIG. 1, there isillustrated the feedback cycle for a standards assessment andaccountability system. The idea of a standards assessment andaccountability system (SAAS) is a new concept in education reform.However, this type of feedback process has been established for decadesin other industries such as medicine, business and engineering. Theprocess overall includes the first step of defining the problem. Thesecond step involves documentation and planning. The third step involvesexecution of the plan while the fourth step involves assessment of theexecuted plan. Finally, the overall plan is evaluated at step five.

Generally, the first step is to define the challenge to be met or theproblem to be solved. This step focuses future efforts to the problem athand. In terms of education, the challenge is upon each teacher toimpart specific knowledge and skills to students by the end of theschool year. Prior to programs such as No Child Left Behind, classroomcurriculum was primarily defined by individual teachers with someguidance from the school districts. The No Child Left Behind Actrequires each state to define their own educational standards. This setof standards is essentially a checklist of material to be covered in theclassroom and is organized by grade level and subject matter.

Once the problem has been sufficiently defined, the next step is todocument and plan execution of the solution to correct the definedproblem. The individual steps are documented, and a process toaccomplish the goals is created. Documentation is commonly the mostneglected step. However, documentation will allow others to reproduceand possibly improve upon previously created processes. In some cases,the documentation may also be required for an auditing process.

While the No Child Left Behind Act does not require formaldocumentation, it does state that the curriculum must be based on thestate's educational standards. Ideally, teachers and administrators willrecord their teaching message, material covered and other relevantinformation throughout the school year. Most teachers create a lessonplan for their personal use as a guide for the day's class activities.Next, after the creation of documentation and planning with respect to aparticular problem, the work involved in executing the process isperformed at step three. For most processes, this is most laborious andtime intensive step. Teachers are required to execute their lesson plansand administer tests periodically. Parents have some level ofinvolvement, but are largely limited to review of progress reports orthe occasional test score. Interaction and exchange (or collaboration)between parents and teachers is usually done via scheduled conferences.Additionally, many teachers and parents use e-mail to interact with eachother on a more frequent basis. Assessment plans such as the No ChildLeft Behind Act do not directly address aspects of day-to-day operationsof the school. The Act leaves most of the control to the schooldistricts and their state agencies.

The assessment step involves collecting the results or product of anexecuted plan and comparing these with previous results or againstpredetermined standards. The No Child Left Behind Act requires states toadminister annual assessment tests. Each test question addressesspecific state standards with respect to a student's grade level and asubject. The definition of success or failure is left to the state todetermine. After assessment, the evaluation step involves examining theresults obtained in the assessment step. The process can be cycled backto the definition of the problem step based upon the evaluations made inthe evaluation step. The evaluation step enables successful processesand areas needing improvement to be identified. With this newinformation, the overall process can be improved to achieve betterresults.

Although the No Child Left Behind Act allows states to create their ownstandards and their own definitions for achievement, it providesmeasures to reward success and sanction failure as an incentive toimprove the educational process. Results obtained at the end of theschool year via assessment testing can be used to improve teachingmethods for the following year's students.

Referring now to FIG. 2, there is illustrated an overview of all of theassociated data which must be managed within an assessment test feedbackenvironment. The state educational standards 202 comprise the standardsand criteria established by a state with respect to each student's gradelevel and the subject matter which the student is studying. The stateeducational standards 202 are used as a guide for creating the lessonplans 204 by which particular subject matter will be taught by theteachers to the student in their class. These lesson plans 204 arecreated by the individual teachers and stored within the system. Thelesson plans 204 may be accessed by other teachers as a guide forteaching subject matter to the students. The stored and accessiblelesson plans 204 makes it possible to assess particular teachingmethodologies which have been particularly successful in teachingsubject matter to students. The assignments data 206 comprises theactual assignments that are assigned to the students in order to achievethe state educational standards 202 that are implemented withinparticular lesson plans 204. As with the lesson plans 204, the storingof the assignment data 206 enables a repository of assignments 206 thatmay be utilized by other parties when particular assignments 206 haveproven effective in teaching particular subject matter.

Student grade data 208 comprises the grades of the students that theyreceive responsive to completion of the provided assignments 206. Thestudent grade data 208 is, of course, the first objective measure of howa student is learning a particular subject matter defined by the stateeducational standards 202. The student grade data 208 may be combinedwith other data in providing real time assessment of studentperformance. The student demographic data 212 provides individualizedinformation on the students being taught within a school district. Thiscan provide information such as ethnicity, socioeconomic class and otherimportant types of demographic data that may be used to analyze studentachievement with respect to the subject matters being taught them. Thebehavior and attendance data 210 provides individualized informationwith respect to behavioral problems that may be arising with respect toparticular students and also provides attendance information for thestudents. This type of information would be relevant to an analysis ofstudent performance since students that are not attending class andperforming poorly could have the poor performance attributed to the lackof attendance rather than any failure in the lesson plans 204 orassignments 206 being assigned by a teacher. Similarly, behavioralinformation would likewise point out a potential reason for poorperformance.

The reports data 214 combines the student grade data 208, the behaviorand attendance data 210 and the student demographic data 212 to createan overview of a student's performance in real time. The reports couldbe continuously updated responsive to new information placed within thestudent grade data 208, behavior and attendance data 210 and studentdemographic data 212, and the reports may be accessed in real time byteachers, parents, students and school administrators to provide anup-to-date measuring stick of student performance with respect tovarious state educational standards 202.

Referring now to FIG. 3, there is illustrated an overall functionalblock diagram of the components of the real time tracking system of thepresent disclosure. The tracking system platform 302 includes andprovides the ability to access all of the stored data and controlmodules of the tracking system. This includes state educationalstandards 202, the lesson plans 204, the assignments 206, the studentgrade data 208, student demographic data 212 and behavior and attendancedata 210 described previously with respect to FIG. 2. In addition toproviding the ability to access and manipulate all of this data, thetracking system platform 302 provides web-based graphical userinterfaces and provides the ability to externally access the stateeducational standards website 304 via the Internet 306. The variousfunctional modules described with respect to FIG. 3 are all containedwithin the tracking system application platform 302. The tracking systemplatform 302 controls all aspects of module registration, applicationstructure, security and permissions.

Databases accessible via the assessment platform 302 include theeducational standards database 308. The educational standards database308 comprise all of the state standards that are downloaded from thestate standards website 304. The information comprises each of thestandards associated with particular grade levels and subject matterwhich the students must accomplish. While the present disclosure isdescribed with respect to state educational standards, any establishedstandards at any level of educational control may be used. Schooldistrict database 310 includes school district and student specificinformation. This information includes such things as the studentdemographics 212 and the behavior and attendance information 210 that istracked and maintained by the school district. An additional database312 includes other types of data such as the lesson plan information,assignment information and grade information. While this information isdescribed with respect to a single database 312, all of the data may bestored in separate databases or, alternatively, the information could becompiled within a single database with the educational standards data,the school district data and the lesson plan, assignment and grade data.

An import module 314 assists in the importation of the state standardinformation from the state standard website 304 for storage within theeducational standards database 308. The load school data module 309enables the districts and schools information to be loaded into thesystem. The school data consists of all information from class schedulesto student rosters. The most basic school data required for minimaloperation of the tracking system platform 302 would include, but is notlimited to, district information, school information, school-districtrelationship, all system users, user-district relationships, user-schoolrelationships, system user rules (teacher, student, parent, etc.),parent-student relationships, student information (demographics, birthdate, etc.), teacher information, (demographics, certifications, etc.),class information, teacher-class relationships, student-classrelationship. The school district database 310 accepts data from avariety of sources including xml files, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL,Oracle, csv files and propriety data formats. Although there are a fewstandard formats for school data, the process of downloading data to theschool district database 310 is usually a customized process fromdistrict to district. At times, schools within the same district storetheir data via entirely different methods and large amounts of databasework must be done to load the data into the school district database310.

The lesson plan module 316 enables the teacher to create and save lessonplans for teaching various requirements of the state educationalstandards stored within the educational standards database 308. A lessonplan may be defined and established with respect to a particulareducational standard and saved such that the lesson plan may be accessedin the future by the teacher creating the lesson plan. Additionally,saving the lesson plan enables it to be accessed by other teachers whencreating their own lesson plans. The lesson plan module 316 enablesindividual teachers on a regular basis to prepare lesson plansthroughout the school year. Most teachers currently create lesson plansin an ad hoc manner. Methods for creating lesson plans vary from teacherto teacher. The lesson plan module 316 contains a standardized form forcreating lesson plans. These lesson plans can then be associateddirectly with one or more state educational standards. By creating andusing lesson plans within the lesson plan module 316, teachers may referto the lesson plan module for guidance to help focus on a specificsubject matter and ensure concepts are completely taught in class.Parents and school administrators are given insight into thedocumentation of the planned activities within the classroom. The lessonplans act as a link between the state educational standards and theactual work assigned in class for grading. When lesson plans are createdwithin the lesson plan module 316, teachers can choose to share themwith other teachers within the system. When lesson plans are shared,they are made part of the lesson plan library 317 stored within database312.

In addition to the standard data in the lesson plan fields, thefollowing advanced features are also available within the lesson planmodule 316. These include a peer teacher rating system, average gradeand standard deviation achieved by the specific lesson plan, feedback,suggestions and comments appending to the lesson plan notes, number ofteachers using a lesson plan, similar lesson plans based on relatedstate educational standards and lesson plans sorted by rating or usageand filtered by one or more specific educational standards.

The assignment module 318 allows for the creation of various assignmentsto accomplish the criteria established within a lesson plan. Theassignments may be saved by the assignment module 318 for future use bythe teacher and may also have an association with a particular stateeducational standard. The assignment stored within the assignment module318 may be accessed by other teachers in generating assignments toaccomplish related state standards. Assignments are entered by a teacherinto the tracking system platform 302 via the assignment module 318. Theassignment management module 318 tracks all of the work assigned by theteacher in a class. Assignments are linked to one lesson plan each andthus, to one or more state educational standards. Since assignmentgrades will be used as a measure of student performance for specificstate standards, assignments should be designed to focus on and assessunderstanding of materials presented in the lesson plan

In a further embodiment, the assignment module 318 may include anon-line questionnaire functionality. This will enable teachers to createcustom multiple choice assignments on-line. Each question or problem inan assignment can be associated with a specific state educationstandard. Teachers would have the ability to create their own assignmenttests to drill students at regular intervals to improve scores. Teacherswill have a more detailed result from grades instead of performancebased on assignment grades, they can be weighted on individualquestions. Assignments can be graded automatically. If teachers caneliminate grading time, they will be allowed to concentrate more onteaching rather than grading. Assignments could be shared in the sameway lesson plans are shared.

The tracking system platform 302 ensures that only authorized users areallowed to see their protected data. A few examples of permissionsapplied to assignment displays include teachers can manage assignmentsonly for classes that they teach. Students may only have read onlyaccess to assignments in classes they take. Parents have read onlypermissions to assignments in classes taken by their children. Schooladministrators have read only access to see how assignments in allclasses within their school. District level administrators can see allassignments in all classes in all districts within their district.Grades for a student can be seen only by the student, the student'sparents, the student's teacher for that specific class taught by theteacher and the school administrator. If a user is both a teacher and aparent, the user can manage all classes they teach. However, they onlyhave read only access for classes they do not teach but are taken by theuser's children.

The grade module 320 provides the ability to enter students' grades withrespect to assignments that have been created and assigned by theteacher. The grade module 320 allows grades to be stored by assignmentor by class depending upon the manner in which the teacher finds mostbeneficial. The information stored within the grade module 320 may beaccessed by teachers, school administrators, parents and students toprovide up-to-date information with respect to how a student isperforming with respect to a particular class or particular stateeducational standard. Grades may be entered into the grade module 320 bytwo methods, by assignment or by class. Grade entry by assignment allowsteachers to select an assignment and enter grades and other pertinentinformation for the entire class. Teachers can mark an assignment aslate, turned in or exempt. Notes can be included next to each assignmentthat can be retrieved by students and parents viewing the assignment.Grade entry by class is a module that provides a specially formatted,fully functional on-line spread sheet. Teachers can enter grades intothe on-line spreadsheet as if they were using any standard desktopspreadsheet application. In both cases, final averages for each studentare automatically recalculated based on a new value entered into thesystem. Teachers can even test the effects of raising or lowering gradesby several points on the student's final average. When students havesubmitted their assignments, the teacher may grade the assignments andenter the grades by assignment or via the grade module 320. If theteacher has created an on-line assignment, it will be gradedautomatically.

The grade module 320 provides teachers with the option to calculatestudent grades via three different methods. Point valueassignments/non-weighted assignment types may be used whereinassignments are calculated on point values only. Assignment types arenot weighted. Additionally, point value assignments/weighted assignmenttypes may be used wherein assignments are calculated on point valuesonly and assignment types are weighted based on teacher definedpercentages. Finally, normalized assignment/weighted assignment typesmay be used wherein assignments are normalized to 100% before averaging.Assignment types are then weighted based on teacher defined percentages.These calculations would be used in all student averaging fields and allautomatic real time calculations throughout the tracking system.

Finally, the report module 322 allows for reports to be created from allof the various data stored and obtained via the tracking system toprovide real time and up-to-date feedback to specific individuals. Thereport module 322 enables a report to be created specific to theparticular individual using the report. Within the report module 322,each user level has access to their own set of report types. Forexample, students have access to summary reports of their grades,performance trends and areas in need of improvement. Parents' reportsare similar, but they are granted access to reports for all theirchildren. If a school administrator were obtaining data with respect tothe performance of their students district wide, the report module 322could generate a very high level report illustrating the performance ofstudents at the district wide level. Likewise, if a teacher werereviewing the performance of the students in her classes, report module322 could be configured to provide a class level report for thatparticular teacher. The information provided by the report module 322would be subject to various provisions such that only individualsauthorized to have access to particular information would be grantedaccess rights.

Teachers have a series of reports that summarize class grades,attendance, behavior and state education standards performance. Theteachers' reports additionally show class performance compared to theirother classes addressing the same state educational standards within thetracking system platform 302. Teacher reports show strongest and weakeststudents and calculate weakest overall education state standardperformance. These provide just a few examples of the reports that maybe generated if the right data is collected and stored in a usefulmanner. Numerous other data mining techniques may be used to obtain anytype of report desired by a user. School administrators have similarreports that encompass all classes within a school. Districtadministrators have reports that summarize information for all theschools within a district. State administrators have up to the minutereports summarizing results from all the districts within the state.These reports may be generated in real time as the data is receivedwithin the tracking system. Other types of reports include number oflesson plans per teacher, network usage and average online sessiontimes.

Addition modules 330 may provide other functionalities to the platform302 with respect to behavior, attendance, class management, etc.

Using the tracking system platform 302, everyone involved in theeducation process can take advantage of access to real time information.Students will have their most current grades and instantly recognizetheir weakest areas. Parents won't have to wait for a progress report orreport card to know their child's grades. Teachers will be able to helpstudents most in need in the exact subject areas requiring assistance.Instead of hoping for the best during year-end assessment tests,teachers will be empowered to play an active part in improving statestandards performance. School district and state administrators willhave the most current data available to make critical decisionsaffecting their jurisdictions.

Referring now to FIG. 4, there is illustrated a flow diagram describingthe overall process for generating reports on student performance usingthe tracking system described with respect to FIG. 3. The overallprocess consists of several independent steps. The steps should befollowed in order for a first pass. However, each component may be usedout of order at any particular time to perform a particular taskassuming the necessary processes for operating the component have beenachieved at some earlier time period.

Initially, the state standards are imported at step 402 using the importmodule 314. The state educational standards for a particular state aredownloaded into the educational standards database 308 from a statestandards website 304. The educational standards information on thestate standards website 304 is publicly available and accessible via theInternet. However, in alternative embodiments, the state standardsinformation could be obtained and manually entered into the educationalstandards database 308 using any known data entry technique rather thandownloading via the Internet. In a preferred embodiment, the statestandards are automatically downloaded into the state standards database308. This enables the educational standards database 308 to becontinuously updated with current information. However, it is alsopossible to manually perform this operation. The automated method merelycomprises the manual method executed by a system server at regularintervals.

The step of importing state standards is required to ensure that thetracking system has an updated version of a state's publicly availableeducational standards. To be useful, the state's educational standardsmust be converted from their existing format into a relational databaseformat for storage within the educational standards database 308. Inmost cases, each state publishes their educational standards in an HTML(hypertext markup language) format or an XML (extensible markuplanguage) on their educational state agency website. However, otherformats may be used. The state agency keeps these standards up to datewith the latest version.

Next, the school district data is loaded into the school districtdatabase 310 at step 404. This data encompasses, for example, classinformation, class schedules, teacher and student information, parentstudent relationship records, and many additional sets of information.This data enables the tracking system to organize and track all relevantschool information. Each district and/or school entered into thetracking system usually has a different source data structure. The datastructure across different states, districts and schools varies greatly,and the methods for loading data into the standards database 308 changesdepending upon the source data. The school district database 310 has astructure that is built to dynamically handle these various structuresand allows for quick loading of millions of records. This data loadresults in a system with log in accounts for every teacher, parent,student and school administrator for a district or school. All classesand schedules are ready to use. Administration utilities are availablefor school administrators to handle class schedule and student recordchanges manually.

The data structure across different states, districts and schools variesgreatly, and the methods for loading data into the standards database308 changes depending upon the source data. The school district database310 has a structure that is built to dynamically handle these variousstructures and allows for quick loading and maintenance of millions ofrecords.

The school district database 310 is organized into a hierarchy of Rolesand Domains as shown in FIG. 3 a A user in the system is assigned ausername and password to access their account. Each account can beassigned to a set of security groups or Roles. Each Role can be givenaccess to a specific set of tools/modules within the system. These toolsare used to view or manage data within a specific Domain. A higher levelRole (the System Administrator) can delegate management of sub-domainsto lower level Roles (the District System Administrators). Thisdelegation empowers Roles at different levels to maintain data withintheir respective Domains. With this simple hierarchical design, theinitial load of school district data can be quickly loaded into arelational database. The labor involved in maintaining the large amountof data can be divided between the roles responsible for generating andmaintaining the data. Administrators and decision-makers have immediateaccess to relevant summary data. Parents have access to their children'sdata.

In the system, the top level Domain is the Super District 380. The toplevel Role is the System Administrator 382. The System AdministratorRole has access to view or manage all the data contained within all theSuper Districts 380. The database 310 can contain one or more SuperDistrict Domains 380 and one or more System Administrators 382. EachSuper District Domain 380 contains one or more School District Domains384 which correspond to real, independent school districts in thesystem. The Superintendent Role 386 can be used to view any datacontained within their School District Domain 384. The District SystemAdministrator Role 385 has access to view and manage all data containedwithin the School District Domain 384.

Each School District Domain 384 can contain one or more Campus GroupDomains 388 each with an assigned Central Office Supervisor Role 390.For example, a school district may have one person responsible for allhigh schools, one person responsible for all middle schools and a personresponsible for all elementary schools. Each Campus Group Domain 388 cancontain one or more Campus or School Domains 392. Each School Domain 392contains one or more Class Domains 394. School Domains 392 are assigneda Principal Role 395 and other administrative roles. Class Domains 394are assigned Teachers 396 and contain Students 397. Parents 398 arelinked to one or more Students 397. Students 397 are linked to one ormore Parents 398. Teachers 396 and Students 397 are linked to multipleClasses 392. This data load results in a system with login accounts forevery teacher, parent, student and school administrator for a districtor school.

Referring now back to FIG. 4, lesson plans are generated at step 406.This is required before class work may be generated. The lesson plansare short instructor guides created and shared by teachers to targetlessons to one or more specific state educational standards. Next, classwork is assigned at step 408. By using the lesson plan library, teacherscan tailor each class to target understanding of concepts within thestate educational standards. Class assignments are created and loggedinto the system. These assignments are either associated with a lessonplan or related directly to a state educational standard. Onceassignments are completed and submitted to the teacher, the teacher cangrade the assignments at step 410 and record their scores in an on-linegrade book. Additional environmental factors such as student behavior,attendance and teacher activity are also tracked for future analysis.Finally, reports may be created at step 412 from all of the obtaineddata. At this stage, the tracking system will have a record of gradeslinked to specific students and their demographic information. Thesegrades are also linked to lesson plans and state educationalrequirements. Thus, as grades are recorded into the tracking system, areal time measurement of student state standard performance related tospecific demographics and categories is developed.

Referring now to FIG. 5, there is illustrated how a table of stateeducational standards 502 may be linked with lesson plan tables 504created by the lesson plan module 316 and assignment tables 506 createdby the assignment module 318. The state educational standards tables 502are linked to the lesson plan tables 504 and assignment tables 506 suchthat when a lesson plan or assignment is created it can be associatedwith one or more state educational standards. Likewise, stateeducational standards may be linked to one or more lesson plans orassignments.

Referring now to FIG. 6, there is illustrated a graphical user interfacepresented by the import module 314 for the Phase I view enabling theretrieval of updated state educational standards raw source data. Thesegraphical user interfaces would be presented by the import module 314 inconjunction with the tracking system platform 302. The Phase I viewconsists of a set of control buttons on the left portion of the screenand an output window 602 on the right portion of the screen. As each ofthe control buttons are pressed, a step in the import process iscompleted and the results are displayed in the output window 602. Thefirst control button comprises the clear output window button 604. Thisbutton 604 clears the contents of the output window 602 of thepreviously displayed information and provides a blank window. Theretrieved page list button 606 enables the tracking system platform 302to check a state agency's website or other source for a list of allavailable state education standard files. The file names are filteredout and stored into a download queue. The list queue pages button 608provides a list of the queued contents within the download queue. Thisenables assurances that the proper file list is available and has beensuccessfully retrieved. The data illustrated in FIG. 6 comprises a queuelist. The retrieved page content button 610 enables the download of acopy of all files to a local database as flat text files. Finally, thego to Phase II button 612 enables the process to pass on to Phase II anddisplay the graphical user interface illustrated in FIG. 7.

FIG. 7 illustrates the graphical user interface wherein stateeducational standard files may be parsed and imported by the importmodule 314. The Phase II view consists of a control button area 702 anda list 704 of queued files obtained in Phase I. The queued file list 704includes three columns, a check box selector 706 for selecting fileswhich are to be parsed by the tracking system platform 302. A parsedstatus column 708 provides an indication of whether or not a file haspresently been parsed by the system. Finally, a queued file URL 710provides a web address of a file to be downloaded and parsed by thetracking system platform 302. Files are selected for processing byclicking the desired file's check box 706. As each file is processed,the parsed status will change displaying either a parsing success orfailure. The clear parse button 712 clears the parse list 704 of allqueued files. The Reload data button 714 enables the reloading of queuedfiles within the queued file list 704. The start parsing check button716 begins the procedure of processing each of the files that have beenchecked within their associated check box 706. The fixed chapter parentbutton 718 automatically searches for errors in the chapter listing forthe state educational standards and corrects any located errors. Thefixed section parent button 720 enables automatically searches forerrors in the section listing for the state educational standards andcorrects any located errors. Rather than having buttons to correct andfind chapter and section errors, buttons may be configured to find andcorrect errors for any identification hierarchy used by a stateeducational standard. The contents of a raw source data file may beviewed by checking on an associated file name in the URL column 710.Rows will be illustrated in red if they were unable to complete theparse process due to user interruption of the process, a source datafile that was nonstandard, obsolete or informational only or a sourcedata file that contained an error. Rows will be shown in green for filesthat were successfully parsed.

Once the source files have been successfully parsed, the results may beviewed using the graphical user interface illustrated in FIG. 8. FIG. 8illustrates the state educational standards that have been accessed fromthe updated educational standards database 308. A search field 802enables a user to search through the listed educational standards tolocate a particular one. The go button 804 initiates the search processwhile the clear button 806 clears the search field 802. A page selectorfield 808 enables a user to go to any particular page of obtained searchresults. The display window 810 displays the resulting educationalstandards obtained by a search. The section column 812 provides anidentifier for the obtained educational standard. The grade column 814provides an indication of the school grade with which the standard isassociated. The standard column 816 provides a brief description of thestandard. The last modified column 818 provides an indication when thestandard was last updated within the database 308. Finally, the deletecolumn enables deletion of a highlighted standard from the database.

Referring now to FIG. 9, there is illustrated a flow diagram describingthe process by which state educational standards may be imported usingthe import module 314. The process is initiated at step 902 by selectingthe import utility module 314. The output window 602 of the Phase Iscreen is cleared at step 904 of any previously displayed data. Thesystem retrieves a listing of all available state educational standardfiles at step 906. These file names are filtered and stored within adownload queue at step 907. The queued pages are listed at step 908 toenable a user to confirm that the proper file list is available. Thestate standard files are retrieved at step 910 and downloaded into alocal database as flat text files from the state website. The processproceeds at step 912 to Phase H. Within Phase II, the particular statefiles to be processed are selected at step 914. These files are parsedat step 916 to parse the files for pertinent data and save thisinformation in a relational database structure into database 308. Oncethe data has been parsed and saved, the results may be viewed at step918.

Referring now to FIG. 10, there is illustrated how the lesson plantables 1002 created by the lesson plan module 316 are linked to usertables linked the various teachers which may access the system. Thelesson plan tables 1002 are further listed to state educational standardtables 1006 containing lists of the various state standards to beapplied in the creation of lesson plans, and the assignment table 1008describing the various assignments created responsive to the lessonplans. Finally, the lesson plan tables are linked to a classes table1010 indicating the classes with which various lesson plans are to beapplied.

This structure allows many lesson plans to be assigned to a stateeducational standard and many state educational standards to be assignedto a lesson plan. The structure establishes the teacher responsible forthe lesson plan as well as the classes that should see the particularlesson plan. It allows multiple assignments to relate to a single lessonplan. Finally, assignments are purposely limited to only one lesson planper assignment. The structure can be changed to allow multipleownerships of a lesson plan. Likewise, if teachers deem it necessary toassign reference multiple lesson plans for a single assignment, thelesson plan assignment structure can be changed as necessary.

Referring now to FIG. 11, there is illustrated the lesson plan listview. The lesson plan module 316 provides two views, a list view and anedit view. The list view enables teachers to search their lesson plansby subject, status or key word. The results are sorted by status, lessonplan title or last modified date. The search filters section 1102enables a teacher to enter information to be searched by stateeducational section within a state educational field 1104.Alternatively, the teacher may enter specific search terms within asearch term field 1106. The results field 1108 includes a check boxfield 410 for selecting a particular lesson plan for ether review. Astatus field 1112 enables a user defined status for the lesson plan tobe established. The status may take any form desired by the user. Alesson plan field 114 provides a short description of the lesson plantitle and a summary. The last modified field 1116 provides an indicationof the point in time in which the lesson plan was last modified.

When a lesson plan is selected, added or deleted, the edit view isdisplayed as illustrated in FIG. 12. The edit view enables a teacher toview a lesson plan in detail and delete, edit or generate the lessonplan. The title field 1202 enables the teacher to provide a particulartitle for the lesson plan being created or edited, which is used forquick searches and as the header of the lesson plan. The synopsis field1204 enables a teacher to provide a short summary of the lesson planthat is being created or edited. The status field 1206 enables theteacher to provide an indication of whether the lesson plan is active,completed, pending or inactive. A share lesson plan field 1208 enablesthe teacher to indicate whether this lesson plan should be shared withother teachers. The created field 1210 indicates when the lesson planwas initially created, and the last modified field 1212 provides anindication of when the lesson plan has been most recently modified. Theprimary lesson plan section field 1214 enables the teacher to select theparticular state educational standard section with which the lesson planis associated. The associated state standards field 1216 provides anindication of the state standards which are associated with the selectedprimary standard within the section. The lesson plan detail sectionprovides an objectives field 1218 for the user to enter the particularobjectives to be achieved by this lesson plan. The method field 1220enables the user to enter the particular methodologies which are goingto be used to achieve the lesson plan goals. Finally, the concepts field1222 may be used to enter the various concepts and materials which aregoing to be taught using the lesson plan. The assessments field 1224provides a description of the assignments that may be used to assessunderstanding of the lesson material. The resources field 1226 providesa list of textbooks, handouts, notes and other resources used inteaching the lesson. The links field 1228 provides a list of web sitesand tracking system links related to the lesson. The notes field 1230provides additional information relating to the lesson.

FIG. 13 is a flow diagram illustrating the process by which a teachermay view existing lesson plans. A teacher may view their lesson plansand share lesson plans by going to the teacher menu at step 1302 andselecting the lesson plans button at step 1304. The lesson plans maythen be filtered, searched or sorted at step 1306 as desired by theteacher. The lesson plans may be filtered by state educational standardssubject, current user only, shared only and/or lesson plan status. Byentering a search term, the teacher may find a specific lesson planincluding the entered term. By sorting the lesson plans by status, titleor last modified, the teacher finds lesson plans in this method.

Referring now to FIG. 14, there is illustrated a flow diagram describingthe process by which a teacher may create or edit a lesson plan. Theprocess is initiated by selecting the teacher menu at step 1402 andselecting lesson plans at step 1404. The teacher selects the add newoption to add a new lesson plan or selects an existing lesson plan toedit at step 1406. The teacher completes or edits a number of fieldsassociated with the selected lesson plan at step 1408.

Referring now to FIG. 15, there is illustrated the process for linking astate standard to a particular lesson plan. A lesson plan subject isselected at step 1502. The state standards are retrieved at step 1504 byclicking on the add button to bring up the add state standard lessonplan pop-up menu. A state standard is selected at step 1506 from theprovided menu of state standards. By selecting the apply button, thestate standard may be applied to the lesson plan at step 1508. Multiplestate standards may be associated with any particular lesson plan. Oncethe user has completed adding all applicable state standards to a lessonplan, the lesson plan may be closed at step 1510. Similarly, statestandards may be removed by clicking on the X within the remove columnnext to each state standard as illustrated in FIG. 11

Referring now to FIG. 16, there is illustrated how assignments may berelated to a number of other data item tables within the tracking systemplatform 302 including assignment tables 1602 of the assignment module318, user tables 1604, state educational standards 1606, lesson plans1608, classes 1610 and student grades 1612. The assignment tables 1602are entered through the student grade table 1612 to the student usertables 1614. Assignments are structured similarly to lesson plans.Assignments can be assigned to any number of state education standards.Assignments can be related to teachers and classes structurally the sameas lesson plans. Typically, teachers associate an assignment with asingle lesson plan. State educational standards associated with thatlesson plan are inherited by the assignment. The key difference is thatassignments are associated with the student grades table 1612. Thestudent grades tables 1612 include links to the students in the studentuser table 1614, the grade earned for the assignment and other variousfields.

Referring now to FIG. 17, there is illustrated the teachers class listscreen a graphical user interface for providing a teacher with access tocreated assignments. Several graphical user interfaces are involved inthe management of assignments by a teacher. Teachers must select a classto view in the teachers class list as illustrated in FIG. 17 in order togain access to a particular assignment. Once a class has been selected,teachers can add, edit, delete and grade assignments in their classes.The teachers class list screen includes a teacher field 1702 for listingthe particular teacher whose class list is being accessed. The semesterfield 1204 displays the semester for the class list. The grading periodfield 1706 provides the teacher with the ability to select the gradingperiods which are going to be displayed within a class list area 1708.The class list area 1708 includes a period column 1710 for listing theperiod associated with a particular class. The class information field1712 provides a short description of the particular class. Theassignments field 1714 describe the assignment, and the attendance field1716 indicates the attendance within the particular class. From theclass list, teachers can edit class information by clicking on a classtitle within the class information column 1712, manage assignments forthe class and manage behavior for the class.

Once the teacher has selected a class, the assignments list screen willappear as illustrated in FIG. 18. The assignments list screen includes ageneral information section 1802 including a roster field 1804indicating the number of students within a particular class and a viewlink 1803 enabling the individual students to be accessed. The semesterfield 1806 indicates the semester for a particular class, and the classfield 1808 enables the title of the class to be entered. The periodfield 1810 enables the period at which the class occurs to be listed,and the instructor field 1812 enables the class instructor to be listed.The assignment table 1814 includes a listing of all assignments for theclass. A graded column 1816 provides an indication of whether theassignment has been graded by the teacher. The assignments column 1818provides a title of the assignment and a short description thereof. Adetails link 1820 within the assignment column provides more detailedinformation on the assignment. The grade assignment button 1822 enablesthe teacher to grade the assignment. A scoring column 1824 provides forthe maximum scoring on the assignment and an assigned column 1820provides an indication of when the assignment was assigned. A due datecolumn 1828 provides an indication of when the assignment was due. Thedelete column 1830 may be used to delete the assignment by clicking onthe X 1832 located therein. An add new assignment button 1834 enablesthe teacher to enter additional assignments.

An assignment filter window 1836 provides various fields for enabling ateacher to search through the assignments within the assignments table1814. These include the grade period filter 1838 enabling selection of agrade period, the assigned filter 1840 indicating when the assignmentwas made, the search filter 1842 enabling indication of a particularsearch term, the graded filter 1844 indicating whether or not theassignment has been graded, the due date filter 1846 indicating when theassignment was due and the types filter 1848 indicating the type of theassignment. The search button 1850 initiates the search according to theestablished filters within the filter fields. The clear button 1852clears previously entered filter data. From the assignment list view,teachers can filter assignments by grading period, assigned date, duedate, assignment type or graded status. Key words can also be used tofind a particular assignment. To edit assignment detail, the teacher canclick on the assignment name within the assignment column 1818 or thedetails link 1820 under each assignment. To grade an assignment, theteacher can either select the grade assignment book or the gradeassignment view 1822. Clicking on the view link 1803 in the generalinformation block will show the roster of students in the class alongwith their e-mail address. Teachers may also add or delete assignmentsfrom this view.

Once the teacher has selected an assignment, the edit assignment view asillustrated in FIG. 19 will appear. From this screen, the teacher canmanage all aspects of an assignment including related state educationalstandards and lesson plans. The assignment edit window includes ageneral information section 1902 including a roster field 1904 listingthe number of students in a particular class associated with theassignment. A view link 1906 enables the teacher to view the roster ofstudents and an associated e-mail address. The semester field 1908 liststhe semester of the class and the class field 1910 provides a title forthe class. A period field 1912 provides an indication of the period inwhich the class occurs and the instructor field 1914 provides theinstructor for the class.

The record information section 1916 provides a create date field 1918indicating when the assignment was created and a last modified field1920 indicating when the assignment was last modified. The assignmentinformation section 1922 and the important dates section 1923 includevarious data fields associated with the assignment. The graded field1924 provides a check box for indicating when an assignment has beengraded. The extra credit field 1926 provides a check box for indicatingthat the assignment is an extra credit or optional assignment. The namefield 1928 provides for entry of a unique and descriptive title for theassignment. The assignment type field 1930 allows for the entry of thetype of assignment as defined by the teacher. The teacher has theability to define any number of assignment types. Example categories forassignment types include homework, quiz, test, class participation,reading or projects. Additionally, teachers can assign percentageweighting factors to each assignment type. The maximum score fieldprovides an indication of the maximum allowable score before bonus orextra credit points. The assignment code field 1934 comprises a shortfive character code to uniquely identify the assignment. This is used byother modules that must display the assignment within the confines ofnarrow columns. The description field 1936 provides for entry of a fulldescription of the assignment including textbooks required, pagenumbers, question numbers, etc. The data entered must be adequate todescribe the assignment to students, parents and school administrators.The assigned date field 1938 comprises the date that the assignment wasgiven to the student. The date can be selected by either selecting themonth, day and year separately in each drop down menu or by clicking onthe calendar icon 1939. The due date field 1940 provides the date thatthe assignment is due back to the teacher for grading. The due datecould be selected via the drop down menu boxes or by selecting themonthly calendar icon 1941.

The copy changes section 1942 is a special feature enabling teachers toreplicate the assignment to other classes taught by the same teacher ofthe same subject. This enables the teacher to create an assignment oncefor use in several classes that they teach. This link ensures that anychanges made to one assignment are also replicated to the sister copiesof the assignment in other classes. The associated lesson plan field1944 enables the user to select the lesson plan with which theassignment is associated. The TEKS field 1946 provides for selection ofthe particular state standard (in this use a Texas standard, however,any state standard may be used) with which the assignment is associated.The synopsis field 1948 enables the teacher to succinctly define thepurpose of the assignment with respect to the associated state standardsselected in field 1946. The clear lesson plan button 1950 enables theteacher to delete the information in the lesson plan. The save button1952 allows the user to save the created lesson plan, or alternatively,the lesson plan field entries may be cancelled using the cancel button1954.

Referring now to FIG. 20, there is illustrated a flow diagram describingthe manner in which a teacher may view assignments. The teacher selectsthe classes menu at step 2002 and selects assignments at step 2004 forthe desired class. Teachers could additionally select behavior andattendance records for a specific class from the classes menu selectedat 2002. The selected assignments are managed by filtering assignmentsby any available filtering field, searching on a particular term orsorting assignments by graded status, assignment title or due date atstep 2006.

Referring now to FIG. 21, there is illustrated a flow chart describingthe manner in which a teacher may create and edit assignments. Again,the process is initiated by selecting the classes menu at step 2104 andselecting the assignments at 2104 for the desired class. The teacherselects at step 2106 to add a new assignment or to edit an existingassignment. The teacher will edit the fields of the assignment describedpreviously at step 2108 to achieve the desired assignment and save thisat step 2110.

Referring now to FIG. 22, there is illustrated a flow chart describingthe process for associating a lesson plan with a particular assignment.The associate lesson plan button is selected at step 2202 from the classlist screen to bring up the select lesson plan dialogue window. Theteacher will search at step 2204 through the provided lesson plans tofind the desired lesson plan. The appropriate lesson plan is selected atstep 2206 by clicking the select button. The selected lesson plan titlewill appear in the assignment window along with a list of associatedstate educational standards in the lesson plan synopsis. To remove thelesson plan associated from the assignment, the user clicks the clearlesson plan button 1950.

Referring now to FIG. 23, there are illustrated various linkages betweengrade table 2302 of the grade module 320 and other tables. The studentgrades table 2302 is linked to the student user tables 2304 to enablestudents access to their grades. The student grades table 2302 is alsoprovided access to the assignments table 2306 to enable grades to beassociated with particular assignments. The lesson plans table 2308 andstate standards table 2310 also have access to the student grades table2302 via their access to the assignments table 2306.

Referring now to FIG. 24, there is illustrated a top level diagram as tohow the tracking system information may be used by decision makers,educators, students and parents 2402. At this stage, the tracking system2404 will have provided thereto graded class work information 2406related to students and assignments. The assignments are related tolesson plans and the lesson plans are related to one or more stateeducational standards 2408. Given that student records are linked todemographic data and other measurements such as behavior and attendance,aggregate summary data can be obtained more easily. More importantly,this aggregate data (data broken down by various demographics and otherfactors) can be pulled from the accumulated linked information. Thus,real time standards based student performance data 2310 may be used byvarious decision makers 2402. Thus, standard relational databasetechniques can be used to data mine a number of useful statistics tohelp everyone from parents to teachers to school administrators to makemore informed educational decisions.

As soon as an assignment grade is saved, students may see their gradesand progressive average immediately. Additionally, teachers, schooladministrators and state officials can instantly analyze state educationstandards student performance without waiting for a year end test. Statelevel decisions can be made in real time with up to the minuteinformation. With existing system, states base their executive decisionson performance reports that may be at least two years old. Theassessment tests are taken at the end of the school year and theoutsourced testing company can take up to three months to reportindividual student test scores. The advantage of real time standardsbased student performance information can obviously be seen in light ofthese existing delays.

FIG. 25 illustrates the user screen used for grade entry by theassignment module 318. Teachers use the grade entry by assignment screenillustrated in FIG. 25 when they want to have finer control over theindividual grades and additional fields for a specific assignment. Theassignments screen includes a general information section 2502 includingsimilar information fields to those discussed herein above. Student namefield 2504 provides for the display of the student name based on theschool's security setting. Some schools opt for a unique ID number orfirst name only displays. The average field 2506 provides the real timestudent final grade average for the class. The number is updated as thenumber in the grade column changes. The grade field 2508 provides for afield for the teacher to enter the student's grade for an assignment.The late field 2510 enables for an indication that an assignment hasbeen turned in late. The turned in field 2502 provides for an indicationthat an assignment has been turned in before it has been graded. Thisenables students and parents to see if an assignment was successfullyturned in and received on time. The exempt field 2514 enables theteacher to exempt students from particular assignments. This field 2514ensures that a student is not penalized for non-submittal of assignmentsfrom which they have been exempted. The notes field 2516 is a spacewherein a teacher may append comments to the grade record. Theassignment details section 2518 contains a number of fields with generalinformation about an assignment including the assignment name, theassignment type, the due date of the assignment, whether or not theassignment has been graded and the maximum grade for the assignment. Theset grade max button 2520 enables the teacher to set all grades to themaximum assignment grade. The set grade min button 2522 sets all gradesto zero. The turn in button 2524 toggles all the turned in check boxeson and off. The save button 2526 enables entered grades to be saved andthe cancel button 2528 allows grades to be canceled.

Referring now to FIG. 26, there is illustrated a flow diagram describingthe entering of grades through the assignment screen. After selection ofthe class menu at step 2602, the teacher selects the assignment at step2604 for the desired class. The grade assignment button is selected atstep 2606 for the assignment to be graded. The teacher enters the gradedata associated with the assignment at step 2608 and once the grade datahas been entered, provides a check within the graded check box at step2610 to indicate that the assignment has been graded. Once this gradedata information has been selected it may be saved at step 2612.

Teachers use the class grade book as illustrated in FIG. 27 when finercontrol over the grades is not necessary. Grades for multipleassignments can be entered quickly into a spreadsheet type environment.The grade entry by class screen includes a general information section2702 including general information as described previously herein above.A grade summary section 2704 includes a summary of the number ofassignments that have been graded in field 2706 and a class averagefield 2708 indicating the average of the class. Section 2710 includes alist of each of the students within a particular class. The classaverage for the student is indicated in column 2712. Each particularassignment within the grade book is indicated by a due date 2714,assignment type 2716 and an assignment code 2718. The weighting of aparticular assignment with respect to the overall class average isindicated at 2720. The grade for an assignment may be entered in gradeentry fields 2722 for each student on each assignment. The gradeaverages within the average column 2712 is automatically updated uponeach grade change. The last row of the grade entry screen contains thegrade average for a particular assignment. Assignments that are notgraded are displayed in red and graded assignments are displayed ingreen. The grade summary at the top of the page shows the class average2708.

Referring now to FIG. 28, there is illustrated the process for using theclass grade book screen illustrated in FIG. 27. Upon selection of theclasses menu at step 2802, the teacher may select the view grade bookselection at step 2804. The user edits the grades within the grade bookas desired at step 2806 and saves the entered grades at step 2808.

Referring now to FIG. 29, there is illustrated a sample demographicsreport on a specific state educational standard. The report includes avarious listing of state educational standards in column 3002 and hasscoring averages broken down by ethnicity and sex of the students. Thesummary view drop down menu 2904 enables the user to select the view thereport will take and the demographics drop down menu 2906 enables theuser to select various demographic combinations to be used such as theethnicity/gender combo displayed in FIG. 29.

Referring now to FIG. 30, there is illustrated a flow diagram describinghow a particular report may be viewed by a user. The user selects thereports menu at step 3002 and selects the particular type of reportneeded at step 3004. The summary review for the report is selected atstep 3006 and the demographic view for the report is selected at step3008. Finally, the go button is selected at step 3010 to initiate anddisplay the desired report. Results are calculated for all stateeducational standards for all ethnicity/gender combinations. Each statestandard can be open to drill down into more specific areas of the stateeducational standards.

Referring now to FIG. 31, there is illustrated a flow diagram describingthe overall process flow of the tracking system platform describedherein above. The tracking system platform 302 supplies updated stateeducational standards at 3102 that are used for the creation of variouslesson plans associated with the standards at step 3104. Teachers teacha class to their students at 3106 using the generated lesson planmaterials and assign applicable class work (assignments) at step 3108related to the material just taught to the students. The students areresponsible for completing their class assignments at step 3110 andsubmitting at 3112 the completed assignments back to the teacher forreview and grading. Teachers will grade the completed assignments at3114 and enter the grade for the assignment at 3116 into the trackingsystem grading module. The tracking system calculates grades andproduces summary reports at step 3118 based upon the grades of theassignments and stored state educational standards and districtinformation to produce these reports. The process may be repeated atstep 3120 with each of the steps relying upon previously providedinformation from earlier iterations of the process.

Thus, using the above-described system, the situation as illustrated inFIG. 32 may be achieved. The first groups of collected data such asstate educational standards 3202, student information 3204, demographicinformation 3206, lesson plans 3208 established by a teacher,assignments generated and graded by a teacher 3210 and student grades3212 upon the particular assignments may be linked together andassociated within the tracking system 3214 to provide an output of realtime data analysis which may be used by teachers, parents, students andschool administrators to gauge the students' performance against themeasuring sticks of the state educational standards. The tracking system3214 may provide real time analysis based upon each of the datacomponents, or alternatively, may only utilize specific portions of datacomponents such as lesson plans 3208 and student grades 3202 to performanalysis as to which particular types of lesson plans are being mostsuccessful with respect to the state educational standards 3202. Thestrength of the tracking system 3214 lies in the ability to provide anydesired linkages between the data collected by the system and provideprovides the real time analysis to the user of the system.

It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art having the benefit ofthis disclosure that this invention provides a real time performanceassessment with respect to established educational standards. It shouldbe understood that the drawings and detailed description herein are tobe regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive manner, and arenot intended to limit the invention to the particular forms and examplesdisclosed. On the contrary, the invention includes any furthermodifications, changes, rearrangements, substitutions, alternatives,design choices, and embodiments apparent to those of ordinary skill inthe art, without departing from the spirit and scope of this invention,as defined by the following claims. Thus, it is intended that thefollowing claims be interpreted to embrace all such furthermodifications, changes, rearrangements, substitutions, alternatives,design choices, and embodiments.

1. A system for providing real-time reports on an application of stateeducational standards within schools, comprising: at least one databasefor storing a plurality of state educational standards established by agovernmental entity, the state educational standards defining a list ofmaterial to be covered in a class by grade and subject matter; anassignment module enabling the user to create and store an assignmentfor a selected class and associate at least one of the plurality ofstate educational standards for the selected class with the createdassignment for the selected class; a grade module for recording gradesof students with respect to a particular assignment and associating thegrades with at least one of the plurality of state educationalstandards; and a report module that generates real-time reports onstudent performance with respect to at least one of the plurality ofstate educational standards responsive to the recorded grades of thestudents for at least one assignment existing at any particular point intime, wherein the real-time reports may be user configured to provideinformation at a selected level of detail of a plurality of levels ofdetail, the plurality of levels of detail comprising at least two of astate level, a district level, a school level, a grade level, a subjectlevel, a class level and a student level for selected educationstandards.
 2. The system of claim 1, further including an interfaceproviding access via a computer network to a plurality of establishedstate educational standards that may be downloaded to the at least onedatabase.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of controlmodules further include a first download module for downloadingestablished state educational standards to the at least one database ina relational database format.
 4. The system of claim 1, wherein thecontrol modules further includes a second download module fordownloading school district data into the at least one database.
 5. Thesystem of claim 1 wherein the user selected level of detail comprisesstudent demographics describing student performance based on ethnicityand gender.
 6. An apparatus comprising: a computer readable storagemedia for storing instructions to program a general purpose computer;wherein, the instructions configure the general purpose computer to:store within at least one database a plurality of state educationalstandards established by a governmental entity; create and store anassignment for a selected class and associate at least one of theplurality of state educational standards for the selected class with thecreated assignment for the selected class; record grades of studentswith respect to a particular assignment; associate the grades with atleast one of the plurality of state educational standards, the stateeducational standards defining a list of material to be covered in aclass by grade and subject matter; and generate real-time reports onstudent performance with respect to at least one of the plurality ofstate educational standards responsive to the recorded grades of thestudents for at least one assignment existing at a particular point intime, wherein the real-time reports may be user configured to provideinformation at a selected level of detail of a plurality of levels ofdetail, the plurality of levels of detail comprising at least two of astate level, a district level, a school level, a grade level, a subjectlevel, a class level and a student level.
 7. The apparatus of claim 6wherein the general purpose computer is further configured to downloadthe plurality of established state educational standards via a computernetwork to the at least one database.
 8. The apparatus of claim 6wherein the general purpose computer is further configured to downloadthe established state educational standards to the at least one databasein a relational database format.
 9. The apparatus of claim 6 wherein thegeneral purpose computer is further configured to download schooldistrict data into the at least one database.
 10. The apparatus of claim6 wherein the user selected level of detail comprises studentdemographics describing student performance based on ethnicity andgender.
 11. A system for providing real-time reports on an applicationof state educational standards within schools, comprising: an interfaceproviding access via a computer network to a plurality of establishedstate educational standards established by a governmental entity thatmay be downloaded, the state educational standards defining a list ofmaterial to be covered in a class by grade and subject matter; at leastone database for storing the plurality established state educationalstandards that may be downloaded through the interface; a first downloadmodule for downloading established state educational standards to the atleast one database in a relational database format; a second downloadmodule for downloading school district data into the at least onedatabase; an assignment module enabling the user to create and storeassignments for selected classes and associate at least one of theplurality of state educational standards for the selected class with thecreated assignments; a grade module for recording grades of studentswith respect to a particular assignment and associating the grades withat least one of the plurality of state educational standards; and areport module that generates real-time reports on student performancewith respect to at least one of the plurality of state educationalstandards responsive to the recorded grades of the students for at leastone assignment existing at a particular point in time, wherein thereal-time reports may be user configured to provide information at aselected level of detail of a plurality of levels of detail, theplurality of levels of detail comprising at least two of a state level,a district level, a school level, a grade level, a subject level, aclass level and a student level.
 12. The system of claim 11 wherein theuser selected level of detail comprises student demographics describingstudent performance based on ethnicity and gender.
 13. A method forproviding real-time reports on an application of state educationalstandards within schools, comprising: storing within at least onedatabase on a computer a plurality established state educationalstandards, the state educational standards defining a list of materialto be covered in a class by grade and subject matter; creating andstoring assignments on a computer for selected classes; associating theassignments for the selected classes with at least one of the pluralityof state educational standards; recording grades of students withrespect to a particular assignment on a computer; associating the gradeswith at least one of the plurality of state educational standards; andgenerating real-time reports on a computer on student performance withrespect to at least one of the plurality of state educational standardsresponsive to the recorded grades of the students for at least oneassignment existing at a particular point in time, wherein the real-timereports may be user configured to provide information at a selectedlevel of detail of a plurality of levels of detail, the plurality oflevels of detail comprising at least two of a state level, a districtlevel, a school level, a grade level, a subject level, a class level anda student level.
 14. The method of claim 13 further including the stepof downloading the plurality of established state educational standardsvia a computer network to the at least one database.
 15. The method ofclaim 13 further including the step of downloading the established stateeducational standards to the at least one database in a relationaldatabase format.
 16. The method of claim 13 further including the stepof downloading school district data into the at least one database. 17.The method of claim 13 wherein the user selected level of detailcomprises student demographics describing student performance based onethnicity and gender.